”Hello, my name is Oscar and I am a student at Brigham Young University. I would like to request a story to be written in the paper on the topic of personal cleanliness and responsibility. Too many times do I go to a large function and see people being irresponsible with their trash.

”I am certain that most of us have been taught the importance of cleaning up after ourselves. I recognize that people are employed as janitors and are responsible for cleaning certain areas, but I feel that we use that as an excuse to throw our trash wherever we want.  

”I would really appreciate it if a story pertaining to this topic would be written in the paper. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you for taking the time to read this message and I look forward to hearing back from you.”

Dear Oscar: (((CLICK CONTINUE READING)))

I’m shocked — shocked I say! What sort of civilized nonsense is this you’re talking?

Take going to a movie. You don’t think paying 12 bucks for a ticket entitles you to dump popcorn and soda onto the floor, or to wipe chocolate from your fingers onto the upholstery? Are you a Democrat, or what? What sort of controlling mother did you have, anyway?

You’ll pay 12 bucks a ticket to get inside a movie house, and another 12 bucks for the popcorn and soda. For 24 bucks a pop for each of 100 moviegoers, management should be delighted to muck out the play-pen at 8 bucks an hour.

You don’t think paying $60 for a ticket to a football game should include the right to be a slob? Why, that’s almost un-American. Surely, slovenly behavior is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. It’s an expression of who we are.

And who are we? We are slobs. You’re right. We don’t want to be responsible.

There is an up-side to this. Along with the soda spilled in the movie theater, wages trickle down, too. Neatness and common courtesy would deprive custodians of their ability to earn an honest wage to support their families. If everyone had good habits, countless innocent children would be driven into the streets to starve. College students would be deprived of income with which to pay their tuition so that they can get higher paying jobs so that somebody else has to clean up the mess.

So don’t be too hard on the mess-makers. They create jobs. Just ask Mitt Romney, who has volunteered to clean up a mess of colossal proportions.

But there are limits to the value of cleanup. If Romney loses the election, it will prove that Americans love messes so much, they’re even willing to go under rather than clean them up. Let’s hope the world’s most famous fish, the one in “The Cat in the Hat,” was not prophetic when he uttered the immortal words: “This mess is so big and so deep and so tall, we cannot pick it up. There is no way at all!”

In that case, we might all wish we’d had more controlling mothers.